Tag: alain

How popular is the baby name Alain in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, see baby names similar to Alain and check out all the blog posts that mention the name Alain.

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On the girls’ list, Anna replaces Emma as the #1 name and Evi replaces Lotte in the top 10.

And on the boys’ list? All kinds of drama! Liam, which rose very quickly over the last few years to reach the top spot in 2015, not only lost that top spot to Daan, but dropped out of the top 10 entirely (!), replaced by Max. Liam now ranks unlucky 13th.

And what about unique names in the Netherlands? Here are a whole bunch, each used just once last year:

For some real-life inspiration, here are lists of famous 19th century and 20th century French people, courtesy of Wikipedia. Notice that many of the Frenchman have double-barreled, triple-barreled, even quadruple-barreled given names. (Daguerre himself was named Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre.)

Mireille and Jean-Jacques Manrot-le Goarnic of Brittany had a dozen children in the 1950s and early 1960s. They gave all of these children Breton (Celtic) names.

The names of the first six (Garlonn, Patrig, Katell, Gwenn, Yann and Morgann) were accepted by the French government.

The names of the last six (Adraboran, Maiwenn, Gwendal, Diwezha, Sklerijenn and Brann) were not.

These last six, therefore, did not officially exist under French law, as their births were never registered. Because they were nonpersons, they could not legally drive a car, vote, marry, enlist, or claim state health benefits.

According to Jean-Jacques, though, the specific reason was “racism, pure and simple.”

These children have no rights. They are nonentities. They have been refused admission to schools. They have been bullied and ridiculed. It’s terrible. All we want is a human solution and no one in any official capacity seems to be interested.

The family’s plight was widely reported.

In 1966, TIME reported that “Papa Goarnic” had been fighting to register the names for years, but had “lost every round.”

[This was the year that the 1803 law was replaced by “a statute that in theory allows the French to call their children just about anything that doesn’t offend good taste. But the law was not retroactive,” unfortunately.]

In the mid-1970s, The New York Times mentioned that le Goarnic had attempted to take his case to the International Court of Justice at the Hague, on the grounds “that France [was] violating the 1532 treaty between Duchess Anne and Francis I.”

[Actually, it was an Edict, not a Treaty, and Anne had been dead nearly 20 years by 1532.]

The situation even inspired poetry–some humorous, some serious. “Open Letter to the Le Goarnics” (1963) by Charles Maitland Fair ran in The New Yorker; “Maçon Murant Merveille” (1966) was penned by Breton nationalist Alain Guel.

In 1976, France finally relented and gave full rights to the six Manrot-le Goarnic children.

There’s no theme to this last batch of names…they’re basically just the leftovers. :)

In Paris, I found the name Victorya:

In Mougins, I caught the name Marie-Ange:

In other random places around France, I spotted the following:

Adélaïde
Adolphine
Alain
Claudine
Didier
Fabienne

Herculion
Hervé
Loyse
Nadège
Raphaëline
Robertine

We toured of one of the (many) perfumeries in the south of France, and our guide was named Yenisey. I didn’t notice her name tag until the end of the tour, so I didn’t have a chance to ask her how she pronounced it. (It did immediately make me think of those Cuban Y-names, though.)

Though we spent most of our time in France, we did pop into several other countries. I saw the name Ornella on a poster in Milan, and the name Hannes on this door in Zürich:

Just down the street from Hannes, we found a statue of the man who happens to have one of my favorite (full) names of all time, Ulrich Zwingli:

Not only is his name cool, but he’s a counterpoint to all the Catholic saints from a few days back. :)

(Too bad we never made it up to Germany — I could have thrown in some Luther as well…)